{"id":7441,"date":"2023-08-17T12:45:59","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T12:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malleeroutes.com\/wp\/?p=7441"},"modified":"2024-05-19T01:00:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T01:00:09","slug":"claypans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malleeroutes.com\/wp\/claypans\/","title":{"rendered":"Claypans: memories + history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the strengths of the photograph is that it brings back the past in a routine and repeatable way that is easily accessible to almost anyone. It mediates the way the world has gone by, which is then interpreted by the viewer. It opens up history as it were, thereby allowing us to remember and interpret the past that has been forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographs can be powerful triggers for memories of our past — they can provoke involuntary memories which recall to us those events we have forgotten . Photographs, in transporting us back to the past, help us to relive our emotional memories. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"SuperCambo
Claypans, Murray Mallee, South Australia <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The above image of the Claypans <\/a> Methodist church built in 1906 was made on an earlier phototrip<\/a> to nearby Galga and Copeville.<\/a> In the current context of the digitalization of visual culture we can begin to interpret the rhetoric of this b+w image through critically engaging with the memory of the white settler past . A critical engagement is needed because rural Australia was generally seen as pre-modern, rather than it being an integral part of Australia’s modernity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The settler memories are of drought, dust, endurance in a harsh climate, plagues of rabbits and mice, and community perseverance in a marginal country with low rainfall. This is ‘struggle country.’ These stories suggests that photography is part of the long tradition of the art of memory<\/a> (mnemonics), rather than being a document of an old church in a landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

There is a history of distrust of images as their sensual appearance is interpreted by a scientific culture as ambiguous and misleading with respect to the creation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge. The reason for the distrust is that meaning is hard to pin down and not certain. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Sony
behind the camera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The cultural turn, however, foregrounds the idea of photographic images that bring back the past as creating narratives or stories. The standard narrative or interpretation of the memories of mallee history is one of the mallee plant species being regarded as of little value (ie., useless) by the white settlers, the scrub cleared for dryland agriculture, the disastrous droughts in this marginal land, the land being tamed and bought under control through technology and that better times lie ahead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The counter narrative is the environmental damage shaped by a colonial legacy of water dreaming (drought proofing the land), the introduction of exploitative farm practices to a fragile eco-system, and the increasing vulnerability of the family farms in an agri-industrial present. In this counter-narrative drought is a cultural concept —the rhetoric of fighting the millennium drought, the human despair and stories of lived experience and survival — as well as the frequent geo-physical absence of rain or water in the Australian climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such the photographic image, in opening the door to lost memories and histories, is part of an ongoing conversation about rural histories, rural decline and the uncertainity of the futures of the Mallee lands within the political economy of agriculture. It is a conversation about rural crisis narratives rather than the myths about rural battlers and national identity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the strengths of the photograph is that it brings back the past in a routine and repeatable way that is easily accessible to almost anyone. It mediates the way the world has gone by, which is then interpreted … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,89,23,5],"tags":[20,45,9,8],"class_list":["post-7441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture","category-history","category-mallee-blog","category-south-australia","tag-architecture","tag-history","tag-south-australia","tag-the-mallee"],"yoast_head":"\nClaypans: memories + history - Mallee Routes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Photography is part of the long tradition of the art of memory rather than being just a document. 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